Timewaster's Guide Archive
Local Authors => Reading Excuses => Topic started by: Silk on March 22, 2010, 07:23:34 AM
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Just to bring it to everyone's attention--I've gotten a couple emails at my main recently that were most likely viruses. I don't know if anyone is finding the same thing of their email addresses, but you know, never hurts to be vigilant...
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I've gotten two from Kendra, other than that, I'm clean. What were the emails like, and who were they from?
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I've gotten a few virus emails in the past, though none recently. Never bothered me too much since they were Windows viruses and I'm on a Mac.
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One was also from Kendra, just a link that I didn't click on. The other was followed by second email from the sender saying "DON'T OPEN LAST EMAIL, VIRUS" ...so I didn't. ::)
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What are these virus things you speak of? :)
Nothing here, but then again, I'm on my own mail server with an aggressive server-side virus/spam scanner that tends to send anything but legitimate good email into great beyond. And I'm on linux, so it wouldn't matter even if I did get one. Silly windows users.
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One great way to avoid virii is to use RTF or plain text exclusively. Compound document formats are fun and useful, but unfortunately can contain executable code. . . .
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I think we're less concerned about document macros (and no, you're not going to convince me to send line-level edits via RTF--they're too hard to locate), and more about viruses that get on your computer and hijack your address book. Viruses like these often will just send you spam mail with viagra links and or links to malware-infested websites which just annoys the users on the list more than anything. We tend to trust the users in the list with the documents they send.
As an aside, there are exploits even for RTF files, so you're pretty much hosed unless your document has absolutely no formatting requirements (which is quite rare, given the need for italics, underlining, and such).